


Superboy

by Routcliffe



Category: Ylvis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 16:49:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3699776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Routcliffe/pseuds/Routcliffe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of worldwide kaiju attacks, Bård revives an old show segment with a bit of a twist...and an ulterior motive that isn't working out nearly as well as he thought it would.</p><p>A fic set in the same universe as LillieWescott's Ylvis Saves the World 2: Ylvis vs. Godzilla, by kind permission of the original author.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Well, not exactly yoga

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Ylvis Saves the World 2: Ylvis vs. Godzilla](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2479763) by [LillieWescott](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LillieWescott/pseuds/LillieWescott). 



> Disclaimer: This is set in my own approximation of Lillie Wescott's universe, but she knows it far better, and of course what she says goes. Any mistakes are mine. Also, if you somehow haven't read her amazing work, go and do that. Now. Seriously, I'll wait.

With great power apparently comes a great need to gaze at the city lights from the vantage point of a rooftop. 

It's not much of a rooftop, but then I suppose that by superhero standards, Oslo isn't much of a city, and my own roof is high enough that I can see the downtown skyscrapers. Both of them. 

Nights are still the hardest for me. The nightmares still come a couple of times a week, but it's not them, not anymore. They lost their edge surprisingly quickly, and I think I know who to thank for most of that. As for the rest...

I could have told you, before any of this happened, that time doesn't precisely heal all wounds. What it does is change everything, hardening fumbling practice into flawless routine, building up calluses and scar tissue, acclimatizing you to a new normal, creating distance between yourself and trauma. Growing new things. It isn't the nightmares, now, that keep me awake, but the subtle changes: the rerouting of pathways, the formation of new connections, the deepening of existing channels. It must be going on all the time, but lying still, in the dark, is when I feel it. Often it spurs me to panic or exhilaration. 

It used to drive me from my bed to go on long late-night walks, but then the last time I went out, a few weeks ago, I got recognized. Students, drunk. I tried to be gracious. I wonder what they make of the photos they took with me. I wonder if the panic shows in my eyes. 

The next night I thought I would simply come up here and brood until the sun came up. But then, with no distractions besides the quiet percolating behind my eyes, I started poking around, exploring what I could do. That was my first test drive, and when it was over, I was exhausted enough to come back down and sleep all night. I did dream a hammering on my door, and I knew exactly who it was, but I turned up the music in my head and drowned him out. Now the roof is part of my nighttime ritual, and I don't need to bother with the walks. 

I tell my family, friends, and neighbours that I'm out here doing yoga. To help me relax. 

It isn't entirely a lie, I reflect, as I unbind my mind and flow into the willow tree at the edge of my property, sharing its slow alien thoughts, tasting water and soil and sky. Hold for one, two, three, four, five. And back. The willow was as much as I could do at first, the first thing I tried that wasn't a grid. Grids are so easy. Now the willow is easy too. 

The city streets are harder. Pushing out, I encompass as much of Oslo as I can. It means spreading out thin, thin, to a wisp of awareness, concentrated only where I want to be concentrated. This is where I'm still clumsy, groping for kinks and catches that I'm sure I'll be able to find easily with more practice. I greet a stray dog with a phantom scratch between its ears, prod a passed-out reveller to turn onto her side so she won’t choke if she throws up, urge a frightened child deeper into hiding before he's spotted by the man with the belt. This used to leave me weak and breathless; it doesn't anymore. I get as far as I got last night, push out another half block, and then hold for one, two, three, four, five. And back, feeling dizzy and swimmy and stretched, and profoundly happy. There's a joy in this, a combination of the satisfaction of a well done performance and the ecstasy of connection and even now the pure breathless wonder of being able to do any of this at all. There's healing in it too, in basking in the sweet boring normalcy of an Oslo summer night, in getting lost in something bigger than me and letting it bathe the bits of my soul that are still raw. 

I've been looking for a name for this. There has to be some kind of rhyme or reason, a common thread linking these new things. I'm sure we could come up with something brilliant together, but...not just yet. 

I haven't told anyone. No, not even my brother. He has quite enough on his plate right now, thankyouverymuch. When we've both recovered a little more, and when I've got a handle on it, I'll let him in on it, but right now I'm still exploring. Besides, it's nice to have something small to myself again. 

_Mostly_ to myself, I realize ruefully. Gregor must have been taking out his garbage, because now he's standing at the end of the Andersson driveway in his boxers. “Hey, Ylvisåker, that doesn't look like yoga to me!”

As an answer, I hold my arms out in front of me at shoulder height, turn my palms up, close both fists, and raise a finger from each hand. Serenely, I tell him, “This position is called the Upward Bird.”


	2. Ultimate Payback: The Serpent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bård works up an appetite.

_Bård Ylvisåker sips tea while staring out the glass doors of a majestic house, as classical music plays. He lays the cup down, opens the doors, and walks onto the front lawn. He trips and falls to his knees with a curse. He tries to get up, and falls on his face. A garden hose is wound around his ankle. With a cry of frustration, he shakes his foot free and begins to reel in the garden hose, hauling on it hard. It catches. After a couple of tugs, the nozzle goes flying towards him, catching him on the forehead and knocking him flat again._

_The Payback music, with its frenetic guitar, kicks in. Cut to Bård in a convertible, wearing driving gloves and his Washburn jacket and driving recklessly down a country road. This year the car is a 1996 Mustang, and the driving footage is real. There is a fresh cut on his forehead and another on his lip, and he is glowering. The garden hose is piled in the back. There is quite a lot of it._

_He arrives at a marshy area with a torch-lined path, and drags the hose out of the car. It keeps tripping him, and by the time he gets it a decent distance from the car, he is dusty and winded and the knees of his jeans are grass-stained. He staggers back towards the car, making inarticulate noises of rage. Then he turns, and with a roar, hurls a gesture at the garden hose. There is a blue flash, and a shockwave, and when the light fades all that is left of the garden hose is a crater._

***

_The world has changed now, and in the first three days it is online, the two-minute video acquires 357 million views on Youtube. Every penny of the revenue goes to relief efforts, and soon the brothers add an appeal and a link at the end so that people can donate more if they choose._

_The comments section begins with a bit of the usual. Some think it’s too soon, and many think it’s just not funny. It wasn’t supposed to be, but on their own show, it’s the only comment the brothers are going to make about their experiences in Japan, and if people don't like it they can change the channel and watch "The Farm." (Goodness knows it needs viewers these days; with fourteen million Europeans still lacking basic necessities in the aftermath , those lucky enough to have television no longer find watching strangers scrabble for subsistence entertaining.)_

_Eventually the comments settle into a list of names, ages, places. The brothers realize, after some googling, that it is a list of the dead. This deliberately ridiculous symbolic gesture has been turned into a memorial, a monument, because stone and marble can't be trusted to stand anymore. You can't hold anyone accountable for Ragnarok. Ultimate Payback is the only payback the victims will ever get._

***

Vegard was waiting for him when he got back to the office. “Hey,” he said, and his voice was oddly gentle. “Pyro texted me.”

“Hey,” Bård said, his own voice cracking with exhaustion. He was tired enough that taking the stairs had left him a little dizzy, even after two stops to rest. And, bizarrely, he was hungry again.

“You didn't try to drive back, did you?”

Bård shook his head. “Pyro drove.”

“She and I are going to have to add texting and driving to that little talk we need to have.” Vegard had been trying to arrange a conversation with Pyro for more than a week, but Bård wasn't going to help him with that.

He shook his head again, a little more tightly to keep the light-headedness at bay. “She pulled over. She's all about the safety; that's why I hired her.” Vegard had insisted, after seeing the first episode of Ultimate Payback, that Bård bring in someone else for what were apparently very advanced pyrotechnics, and Bård couldn't protest without spilling everything. Pyro was brilliant, and the demonstration she'd given the brothers was impressive, but she was also working on a physics thesis. As much as she would have preferred to use her talents for real, she was willing to turn up on camera accidentally on purpose in order to humour the skinny white boy who stubbornly insisted on doing his own pyro and didn't want to even show her his work, and then retire to a quiet rock to keep working on the thesis--this in exchange for just as much pay as she would get for actual pyrotechnics. She reserved the right to lecture him about how stupid this was every so often, and he was trying to work more pyro into their plans for the show so that she could do some real work soon. This was their arrangement, and he’d been as up front about it as he dared when he hired her. 

A little later, in the car, Bård said to Vegard, “I think Ultimate Payback is going well, don't you?”

“Youtube seems to enjoy them,” Vegard said noncommittally. He had voiced doubts about doing something that was so plainly a continuation of a previous year's segment. Normally Bård felt the same way, but he thought in this case the continuity helped, not only in giving the segment cohesion, but in assuring viewers that some things went on, that they were still the same Ylvis. 

“Catharsis,” Bård said, and thought of a word from counselling. “Transference. Next Monday we're blowing up the zahhak that attacked Tehran. Where are we going, by the way?”

“To the hospital, Bård.” 

“Hm. Why?”

Vegard spared a glance from the road. “First and foremost, because that's the fourth time in twelve minutes that you've asked me that question.”

“Hm.” He thought about it a bit. “I do feel kind of...foggy. Just thought I needed to eat something.”

“You're pale as a ghost. And shaking. You were on Tuesday, too.”

Bård nodded. “I remember that. I've just been a little tired. But enjoying filming the segments. Next one's next week. I'm going to...ask Pyro about doing a sort of triple-burst thing. So where are we going?”

“We're going to the hospital, Bård.”

“Are you okay? Do you want me to drive?”

“I'm fine, Bård. We're both going to be just fine.”

***

The doctor was smiling when she ducked back behind the little curtain. “Well, the bad news is that the problem is fairly serious. The good news is that we can clear it up right now.” She held up a juice box, stabbed it with a straw, and held it out to Bård. As he drank, eyeing her quizzically, she told him, “Your blood sugar is _zero_. Finish this, sit here for about five minutes, and then go and eat an actual meal. Make sure you're eating regularly, and it's probably a good idea to carry some candies around with you. Your last bloodwork was really recent, and it says you’re fine, so I’m not going to order more tests, but if it happens often you’ll want to consult your own doctor.” She turned to Vegard. “Make sure he eats. Soon. And if he gets like this again, give him some sugar immediately.”

They were free to go when the five minutes were up. Bård, already feeling better than he would have credited, got up. Vegard insisted on taking his arm, though, and would not be shaken off until Bård was safely in the passenger seat. 

They went straight to a little hole-in-the-wall Ethiopian restaurant where the portions were huge, cutlery was nonexistent, and they were the only two white people in the place. For the next hour, they ate with their hands from a single plate, gorging themselves on injera and gomen wat and doro wat and kitfo drenched in niter kibbeh. In the warm, incense-laden darkness, over a communal meal, Bård felt something that had been pulled cold and taut inside himself start to ease.

It was at times like this that he was most tempted to just tell his brother everything--when their companionable silence was undercut with a quiet thread of worry, when he suspected that spilling everything might make Vegard's life less stressful, and not more. But Vegard would have questions, and right now Bård didn't have answers. And how was he even supposed to start the conversation? _“Vegard, listen. We've known each other all our lives, but I've recently discovered something about myself...”_

“It's good to see you smile,” Vegard said. He'd given up on eating about ten minutes ago, and was absently doing injera-origami. “You look a lot better.”

“I feel much better,” Bård said, as he rolled up the last of the kitfo in the butter-soaked injera it had been sitting on. “As a matter of fact, I'm super.”

“Really great,” Vegard said, with warmth and no small measure of relief.

Well, that was easy.

_That doesn't count, and you know it._

***

Bård had his colour and his energy back when Vegard returned him to the office. When they entered, the others left their desks to crowd around. “I'm tip-top,” Bård assured them, illustrating with a lively little jump. “Just a blood sugar thing. Nothing to worry about.”

Vegard said, “As far as we know it's not an ongoing problem, but just in case, I'll tell all of you what the doctor told both of us: if he gets like that again, give him candy right away and then get him something substantial to eat.”

“But I'm fine, totally fine now," Bård said, "and I will do my best to ensure that any candy donations on your part are purely recreational, rather than a medical necessity.”


	3. The Setup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Vegard launches an inquiry, and labour management issues are touched upon.

It was around eleven in the morning, and Bård was out filming the house scene for Ultimate Payback: The Dragon, when Vegard heard a soft knock on his door. “Yeah?”

Magnus poked his head in. “Vegard, can I talk to you about something?”

“Sure. Come on in.”

The young man slipped in, ducking at the threshold, and closed the door. “I'm concerned about Bård,” he said.

Vegard nodded. “We all are, of course we are. We have to...gently remind him to take care of himself, it looks like. Without overdoing it. He's starting to get grumpy with that, so it's best to pick our battles.”

Magnus bobbed his head. “Yes, yes. But I've been thinking about something since you got back yesterday, and it bothers me.” He sat, abruptly, and said in a low voice, “He ate an entire Grandiosa for lunch yesterday.”

_“Huh?”_

“Before they went away to film the segment, I watched him heat up an entire pizza in the kitchenette. He took it back to his office. I went in twenty minutes later, to drop off the permits for Pyro, and it was gone. He was finishing it off.”

Vegard considered. “Maybe he shared it.”

“He'd been alone, Vegard. I'm quite sure that no one entered or left his office. If anyone tried, I was going to warn them off the pizza, because he's been looking a bit thin, but I didn't have to. He ate a whole Grandiosa at noon, and he had zero blood sugar by three.”

Vegard nodded slowly, taking this in. “What do you think?”

Magnus sat back, a frown on his long face. “Before any of this happened, I would have guessed something like bulimia. I wouldn't rule it out now, but considering what you've both been through, I wouldn't rule out less mundane explanations as well.”

Vegard frowned. “Even if the very next thing he did was make himself sick, he'd still retain roughly twelve hundred calories, which if memory serves is the entire pizza, which would have kept his blood sugar reasonable. So I think we can rule out bulimia.”

“He didn't get sick, anyway,” Magnus said. “He was in his office until he went out to film.”

“Yeah.” Vegard put his chin in his hands. “Where is Pyro? I need to talk to her anyway.”

“Not in until they film on Monday,” Magnus said.

***

Pyro was Preethy Jaipaul, a small Guyanese woman with long hair, brown skin, and oversized hipster glasses. She looked about fourteen, but she was in fact thirty-two, and preferred to be called Pyro because virtually no one could pronounce the “th” in her name correctly. Vegard had insisted that Bård hire her to oversee the special effects in the new segments. He knew Bård kept saying it was really basic stuff and he could handle it himself, but that was very unlike Bård, frankly. Both brothers agreed that part of making quality work was bringing in experts when they were called for, and pyrotechnics were not an amateur’s game--particularly not the sort of stuff that Bård was doing now. Vegard had tried to look it up for himself in the beginning, and he couldn’t find small pyro that involved any of the things he was seeing in Ultimate Payback.

The idea, of course, had come from the things they’d done in Japan, and the incident on Skavlan, when they’d been threatened and reacted instinctively. In the days following the latter, Vegard had asked about joining up again and seeing if they could manipulate those energies at their leisure, but Bård had gotten quiet and nervous about it, and Vegard knew better than to push him right now. Everything they’d been able to do had been turned against them after the battle in Japan, and Bård had by far gotten the worst of it. But he’d crowed about being able to make the pyrotechnics look somewhat like the energy bursts that they’d created with their borrowed power, so Vegard knew the memories weren’t entirely soured for him, and he hoped that it would just be a matter of time. 

In the meantime, he could certainly understand wanting to blow things up, especially after all Bård had been through. But his little brother wasn’t invincible, he wasn’t a pyrotechnics expert, and he had no business messing around with techniques that were apparently state-of-the-art industry secrets. If Vegard had wanted to be a jerk about it, he could have kept digging, and doubtless tracked down whoever had supplied Bård with these things, but his brother was a grown man, and he was starting to chafe at people treating him like he needed minding. Insisting that he hire a pro seemed like the more respectful course of action, and Pyro's effects so far had been of very high calibre.

That said, Vegard wasn’t entirely happy. He kept wanting to speak to her, to see if there was any way she could set things up so that she could get out of the shot in time. On every single segment, there was at least a flash of heel, or the metal equipment case that she carried, and in the fifth one she had been quite plainly crouching behind a bush. You had to know what you were looking for, but by this point Vegard was looking. It was starting to be like finding Waldo. But Bård monopolized her when she was in the office, and she was very firm about not answering work texts out of the office. Bård said they’d already talked about it, and they’d tried a bunch of ways of getting her out of the shot, and the only way they could see was to bring in a second cameraman. Vegard couldn’t remember why a second cameraman was a bad thing, but he had to concede that Bård probably had a point. Still, he wanted to talk to Pyro herself.

On Monday morning, he went over a song that they were planning a video for--it needed something, and he was playing with different things to add--and left instructions that when Pyro arrived, she should be told to come and see him. It had been an eventful morning, and he was already beat by the time he got to the office, so he might have zoned out a little. But when he poked his head out at 9:30, a little surprised that she hadn’t arrived yet, Val reported that Bård had pulled her out to Folketeatret for a meeting the moment she came through the door. 

Vegard switched gears and started going through his e-mail, with the door open so that he could hear when Bård and Pyro came back in, when it occurred to him that they might just grab the keys and the cameraman and the car and go, without stopping in. That would be just his luck. He grabbed his iPad, announced to no one in particular that he was going down to take care of something, and went down to the underground car park to wait for them. 

He hadn’t been at the car for thirty seconds before Magnus came down, car keys in hand. “Do you want the keys?”

“No, I’ll just--” Vegard, who had been leaning against the side of the car and was just in the process of waking up the iPad, pushed himself to his feet. “No, you know what? Could you unlock it for me, please, and then bring the keys back up?”

Magnus unlocked the driver’s side door. He stopped, looked down at Vegard, and cocked his head curiously. “You don’t want him to know you’re waiting for him down here.”

Vegard thought of lying, but Magnus only played a buffoon on TV. He was a smart guy, and he’d been there for just about everything. “This is between you and me, of course.”

“Of course, Vegard.”

“I’ve been trying to talk to Pyro for weeks. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but it’s starting to feel like Bård is helping her avoid me.”

Magnus nodded. He put his hands in his pockets. “All right then. I’ll head back upstairs, then.”

“Thanks, Magnus.”

Vegard waited until the stairwell door had closed, and then opened the driver’s side door. He thought for a moment, and then popped the trunk. If Pyro had already been in... 

Yes! She’d dropped off her case already. A little bit of silvery plastic was sticking out, and Vegard saw traces of white powder. Heart sinking, he took some on his finger, and touched it to his tongue.

Icing sugar?

Standard locks in the Ylvisåker household had been polite suggestions ever since he and Bård had started studying magic tricks. Vegard was a bit troubled by his ability to make short work of this one; shouldn't Pyro's pyro have a more secure container? But nothing could have prepared him for what he found inside. 

Largely because he had no idea what it was.

It smelled delicious, whatever it was. It was in a resealable thermal pouch. It was firm, and its wrinkly, scored surface was covered in a layer of icing sugar. He touched it, was able to break a piece off. 

There were feet on the stairwell, and Vegard heard his brother’s voice. He could close the case, maybe even quietly close the trunk and pretend to be looking at his iPad... Yes, that would clearly be best.

Vegard closed the case, shoved it aside, and crawled into the trunk behind it. He pulled the grey fleece emergency blanket over himself, and returned the case to as near its original position as he could. He pulled the trunk closed. It didn’t shut all the way, though, and before he could make another attempt, the door banged open, and Bård and Pyro were in the car park. “...should hold me for the next little while,” Bård was saying. 

“I hope so, but I’ve taken extra precautions,” Pyro told him.

“All about the safety.” Bård snorted, and his voice grew much closer. “I take that back. You left the trunk open.”

“Did I? Goodness, I’m sorry.” There was a sliver of light, and then the trunk shut firmly.

The next thing Bård said was muffled, but it was congruent with “Just be more careful next time.”

Then, because whatever was in Vegard’s hand was melting rapidly, he ate it. It was sweet and rich and chocolaty and delicious. Why was the pyrotechnician carrying chocolate? The needle on his hijinks detector started to swing back towards bulimia. 

He heard more muffled voices as Bård and Pyro greeted Ivan the camera guy, and all three climbed into the car. He could make out maybe one word in three. Then the car started, and the noise of the engine drowned them out.

***

In the front seat, Pyro glanced back at Ivan, who was fiddling with his phone. Then she turned up the radio a little, shifted the balance towards the back speakers, and leaned over to Bård. “I knew when I signed on that one of my unofficial duties was going to be running interference on your brother, but I’m not really comfortable with the extent of it lately. He’s my boss too, and I think if I don’t at least go and talk to him soon, he’s going to be upset with me.”

Bård nodded. “I hear you. I haven’t been exactly comfortable with it myself, but Vegard...is really good at putting things together.”

Pyro sat in silence for awhile. Then she said, “That’s something I can’t handle for you. I’m just letting you know, I’m reaching the limits of what I’m comfortable doing. I’m a licensed pyrotechnician. It took me a year to get certified. I like my work. I’m very good at it. But the kind of show I’ve been putting on lately is not the one I signed on for.”

“Understood,” Bård told her. “I’ll...work on it. Can you bear with me for today, though?”

“I can. Not much longer, though. If something happens to you, Bård, if there’s an accident of any kind, my career is over. Not to mention whatever effect it has on you. On your family.”

Bård nodded silently as he drove out of the car park. Tears pricked at his eyes as he considered how reckless and irresponsible he was being--until he reminded himself that he wasn’t actually taking the risks that she thought he was. He didn’t know what risks he was taking, or what the boundaries were. That was what he was learning now, and there were no qualified experts to help him out. The dangerous thing he was working with was himself, and everyone was safer if he figured this stuff out on his own. Ultimate Payback was the best thing he’d been able to come up with. He had people around in case something went wrong, but not too many; and they wouldn’t ask uncomfortable questions about why he could suddenly throw blue lightning and spheres of pure energy, with effects ranging from a firm push to atomization. And it was a good outlet for his anger, and others seemed to have latched onto it in the aftermath of the attacks. Everybody won...didn't they?

Not that that any of this changed a single thing Pyro was saying. It was true: having her there decoratively to appease his brother was an abuse of her talents, of her as a professional. If something happened to him, she would be blamed, and his family would be devastated, and the real reason wouldn’t matter. And Vegard really was getting restless. Something was going to have to change, very soon. “I’ll work on it,” he said again.

They stopped off at the storage place to get their zahhak--a gaudy three-necked standing lamp with plastic shades that were a badly executed copy of Art Nouveau stained glass--and for Ivan to get some shots of Bård driving with the top down and the zahhak lamp in the back seat. Then the cameraman climbed back in, next to the lamp, and they drove for another ten minutes to reach the bit of marshy ground for which they had the pyro permits.

***

Vegard felt the car come to a stop yet again, and started counting. This time he got all the way to five hundred, so he reached for the trunk release...and didn't find it.

Right. Old car. Bloody hell. And he felt the hackles on the back of his neck rise as a terrible feeling crept over him. Something was wrong; he had to get out of here. Well, but if he could just...

Before he could just anything, though, a wave of bone-deep exhaustion overtook him. Vegard sank back, suddenly too drained to move.


	4. Pyrotechnics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are a number of narrow escapes. Also chocolate.

Bård waited until Ivan had set up the camera. When he got the go-ahead, he hauled the lamp out of the backseat, and over to the prearranged mark. Then he stalked back to his own mark. 

He loosened his shoulders, exhaled, and rubbed his hands together. He couldn't make this part too elaborate; as far as Pyro was concerned, he was simply setting off work that he'd done himself, earlier in the day. Since they'd arrived he'd been quietly drawing energy from the landscape, so that he wasn't starting out with nothing. Now he pulled, sharply, and felt the power flood into him. This was his favourite part, and if he didn't have observers, he would have lingered, basking in the raw energy, letting it saturate him. As it was, he had until Ivan had taken a few close-ups of the lamp, and Pyro had let a thumb wander into the shot as proof that these were just practical special effects and not what they looked like. When Ivan gave him the signal and they were both clear, Bård fixed his gaze on the zahhak lamp, and took three steps forward. Focusing was getting noticeably easier, and he fired three bursts of energy, one at each of the fixtures. The explosions were deeply satisfying. 

Something was different this time. There wasn't that same gnawing ache stretching from the pit of his stomach to the back of his head. He was hungry, but not shaky. Maybe he was getting better with practice, or maybe it was the big breakfast. Probably a bit of both. 

In American English, someone said, “Mr. Ylvisåker?”

He froze, and spun around. Two men in suits and mirrored sunglasses were standing behind him. He had no idea where they'd come from, and he was suddenly struck by the suspicion that they'd been waiting in ambush. 

“Nice moves,” said the one who hadn't already spoken. It was hard to tell them apart. They had the same build, the same slicked-back brown hair, the same bland faces.

Bård shrugged. “It's good pyro.” 

They had moved, casually, so that they were surrounding him, herding him. “We saw the Skavlan footage, and we thoroughly cased this area for your alleged setup,” said the first one, sounding bored.

“We also have equipment that measures psionics,” the second one said. “You have quite an ability there. Surely you have to have considered how disastrous it would be for that kind of power to fall into the wrong hands.”

He turned away from them, and made as if he was trying to walk away. They followed, of course, and one got in front of him. Bård stopped, with a sigh of exasperation, but he hadn't really expected to get away. He had wanted, first, to make sure that this was what was happening, and second, to see for himself that Pyro and Ivan were still clear. Whatever was about to happen, they shouldn't be roped in, and it would be even better if they didn't find out at all. “Look, the only hands it's in right now are mine, and--not because I think I deserve it or I can handle it or anything, but because I trust who gave it to me--I aim to keep it that way.”

He saw the change in the incline of their heads and the quick motion of a hand to a lapel, the withdrawal of the portable injector. It all happened in the space of less than a second, but he had ample time to consider, to size things up, to strategize. His thoughts were clear and sharp as he gauged, aimed, and let loose a burst from each hand. 

Crackling threads of energy now ran from his fingertips to the heads of the two men, who were swaying slightly on their feet. They looked horrified. Bård was certain that he wasn't hurting them--just making them pay attention. He was overriding their training so that they saw him as a human being rather than an uncooperative subject, and making them understand that he could do a lot more if he chose to. Still, he supposed he would be horrified too. In the softest, gentlest voice he could muster, he said, “Listen to me, please. I'm not going to hurt anyone, and fox song notwithstanding, I have no plans for world domination. The only thing I know about who you're working for is that I am not under their jurisdiction. I want you to tell your bosses that I, and my brothers, and all of our families, and all of our friends and colleagues and their families, are off limits. And if they come after me again, I will not only defend my loved ones, but I will also go very, very public. Is that clear?”

The men nodded vigorously. Bård told them to sleep, and they slowly folded to the ground. 

As soon as he was sure that they were down and out, Bård cut the power, and dropped to his knees. But it really wasn't that bad this time. Was it that he had been determined not to use enough force to hurt them, or was he getting stronger? He had felt much more in control. 

Pyro and Ivan came up behind him. “What did you do to those guys?”

“How much of that did you see?” he asked.

“Enough,” Pyro told him. “They came out of the trees and started crowding you. But by the time we got close, you were handling it.”

Ivan said, “Was that a taser you hit them with?”

Bård gave them a thin smile. “Something like that.”

Pyro offered him an arm, which he waved off. “What did they want?” 

“Thanks, but I’ll just sit for now.” Bård thought for a long time before answering her. “They wanted to know if we’d be interested in using our world-saving talents to protect their own interests. And they looked like they were going to be very upset with me if I said no.”

“Hm,” Pyro said, looking down at him. “How’s the blood sugar?”

“Not gonna lie, I could sure use a granola bar or something.”

“Hang on.” She popped the trunk, and pulled out the metal case, and started to swear. She put the case on the roof. “Help me!” she barked.

Bård wasn't used to being spoken to that way by his employees, but he pulled himself to his feet by clutching the back bumper, and understood. Together the three of them hauled Vegard's unconscious body out of the trunk, and laid him out on the ground on top of the fleece blanket. 

“Pulse and breathing are all right,” Pyro reported. “He couldn't have been in there long enough to get heatstroke.”

“He's pale,” Ivan observed.

“So’s Bård,” Pyro said. She retrieved the case, and handed Bård--who was puddled next to his brother’s head--a powder-coated oblong.

“What is this? What do I do with it?”

“It's a brown butter truffle,” Pyro explained. “Sugar and chocolate and fat: fast energy plus slow energy.” While Ivan was turned away, she added in a whisper, “If I'm not bringing actual gear, I figured I might as well come prepared for this hypoglycemia thing of yours.” 

“Nature's perfect food,” Bård observed, popping it into his mouth. The first one tasted amazingly good, but it didn't help much. By the fifth, though, he was starting to feel better. He patted his brother's face. “Vegard? Vegard?”

Vegard stirred and moaned. Bård kept patting his cheek, gently but insistently, until Vegard swatted his hand away and opened his eyes. “Yeah?”

“We found you in my trunk.”

“Mmmm.” Vegard closed his eyes again. 

“Should we call 113?” Ivan asked.

“No,” the brothers said together. 

“I’m fine,” Vegard said groggily. “Just tired.”

Bård glanced back at the two men on the ground. “Who put you in there?” He knew what he'd promised, but drugging his brother and stuffing him in a trunk meant all bets were off.

“No one.” Vegard looked ashamed. “Sorry.”

Bård looked down at Vegard. “Were you...trying to spy on me?” 

“I was worried about you,” Vegard said. 

Okay, so that hurt, but Bård couldn't stop the laughter from bubbling up. “And what, you got really comfortable? Worst spy _ever_.” 

Vegard's look of contrition relaxed into a sheepish grin. “I was a bit tired already. And suddenly I just couldn't keep my eyes open.”

Bård kept his own smile bright, but his mirth dried up. This was why everything had been so easy, and why he felt so much better afterward. He hadn't just been depleting his own resources; he'd drained Vegard as well. 

One of the things that made telling him so difficult was the unfairness of it. Sure, yes, Bård was the one who'd gotten the worst of things in Japan, and he supposed in some grand cosmic scheme maybe that meant he deserved more of a break. But it didn’t feel right, that they’d begun by wielding those powers together, and only he had gotten to keep them. It felt doubly unfair, now, to realize that those powers were less rough on him and far easier to control when he was drawing energy from Vegard. But of course, that made it doubly necessary to tell him what was happening. 

“When was the last time you got _your_ blood sugar checked?” Pyro asked Vegard.

“We both had a full workup when we got back from Japan, and we were both fine,” he told her, “but breakfast doesn’t seem to have stuck with me.” His face turned plaintive. “Your gear smelled delicious. And I don’t say that to a lot of pyrotechnicians.”

Bård helped him sit up, and Pyro handed him a truffle. 

Vegard’s eyes narrowed in bliss as he ate. “Oh my god.” But then that little worry-line appeared between his eyebrows. “Someone want to tell me what’s with the bodies?”

Bård spared a glance at the two agent types on the ground nearby. “They’re not dead. Tell you all about it later, okay?”

“’Kay.”

Ivan and Pyro helped Vegard get to his feet, and into the passenger seat of the convertible. Pyro got into the driver’s seat and put the top up. The bottom dropped out of Bård’s stomach when she said to Vegard, “You’ve been wanting to see me?”

***

The ride back to the office seemed twice as long and, although Bård wouldn’t have thought such a thing possible, three times as uncomfortable. He sat in the back with the radio blaring, while Ivan played with his phone and Vegard and Pyro talked up front. They started out tentative and polite, moved into serious and earnest, and by the time Pyro pulled into the parking garage, they were laughing together.

Pyro turned off the car, and her eyes ticked from brother to brother. “Going by what Vegard said on Thursday, you should both eat as soon as possible.”

Bård had brought a lunch--wheatberry, avocado, and walnut salad with cherry tomatoes and basil, lemon, and olive oil dressing--but he had the feeling that he was in for a talking-to, and the private/public space of a restaurant might help him avoid both gossip and fireworks. “Matteo’s,” he said. “I’m buying.”

“Thanks,” Vegard said. When Pyro got out, he slid into the driver’s seat. “Might as well take this car, mightn’t we?”

Bård got out, to transfer to the front seat. Pyro was waiting for him. “Here, take my arm,” she said. As she walked him around the car, she told him, softly, “I promised him I’d do a better job of keeping out of the shot, and I assured him that you aren’t bulimic. I didn’t say anything about you doing your own pyro. Or the curious way it makes your blood sugar plummet. Or the curious way it makes _his_ blood sugar plummet. Or that it requires no equipment whatsoever, but seems to attract G-men.” She met Bård’s eyes. “Or that what you’ve been doing has never been possible with pyrotechnics. Anytime you see an effect like that on film, it’s CGI. I didn’t tell him any of that, because I figured that’s your job. Not necessarily today, not even tomorrow, but soon.”

“Thanks,” Bård said, glad that she was helping to hold him up. 

“Don’t look so shocked. Physicist, remember? I’m a little put out at myself that it took me this long to put it all together, but until the tocouyaha killed my cousins I had no idea any of this was possible. Now, go eat.”


	5. Harmony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which resolutions are made.

Yesterday morning I resurrected a sparrow. I heard it hit the kitchen window while I was getting ready to leave. I slipped outside before any of the kids could see and gathered up the tiny, warm, limp body in my hands, and sent my mind questing. A nudge here, a little coaxing there, a miniscule knitting together, and with a surge of joy I felt the tiny heart throb to life. 

I didn't do yoga last night. Between the bird and that little adventure before lunch, I was out as soon as I hit the pillow. But out on the roof, now, I'm playing with it, testing my limits. 

Haunting the hospital morgue, I find it won't work if a body has been dead for too long, even if it's just a couple of minutes; it forgets life, becomes part of the order of things. In the emergency room, with a young man who got drunk and walked through a plate glass window, I learn that some changes are too great for me to make all at once. Aching with grief and defeat, wondering what I'm good for if all I can save are sparrows, I start to pull back, but what I see as I retreat compels me to try one last time. 

In the pediatric oncology ward, I make the tiniest of changes, and tell a four-year-old's brain tumour to start shrinking. This is more like it. But only one child, out of so many... I make a second attempt, on a nine-year-old with a beautiful smile and papery yellow skin, but it gets harder and harder to talk to her liver, to connect, to persuade it. I push myself until my vision is swallowed up by grey mist and my ability to do anything goes away for a little while. 

When the mist clears, I'm still unfurled, my mind drifting loose, unfocused, bobbing along on currents I don't quite understand. And I sense, without being able to pinpoint how, that there's a storm coming. Not now, not even very soon, but it's coming.

Clumsily I reel myself in. I come to on the roof with the wind drying the sheen of sweat on my face, still riding the high of connection. 

All at once, I resign myself to the name I have been toying with for this cluster of talents, the collective name of the ability to remotely greet stray dogs, shake exactly two aspirins out of the bottle at a time, heal the dying, and know exactly where to dig my knuckles into Magnus' shoulder to release a knot. This is harmony. To understand what is going on, to know what to do to make it run more smoothly, and to--sometimes--do it. I'm going to have to manage this properly. And I’m really going to have to come clean--if not to my colleagues, at least to my family. To my brother. It's hardly fair, considering, and I don’t know how to tell him in a way that won’t make his life more complicated, but he needs to know. I can’t hide anymore. If what I saw on the horizon is really coming, I'm going to need all the help I can get. 

“Honey?” I turn. My wife stands at the sliding doors in her nightgown. “Come in. It's getting late.”

I get to my feet, swaying a little. She hauls open the doors. I ease myself down from the roof onto the balcony, and slip back into the house, and her welcoming arms. “Are you all right?” she asks, touching my cheek. “You look a bit peaky.”

I cup a hand behind her head, rubbing a thumb along the smoothness of her golden hair, and press our foreheads together. I whisper, “I'm just fine, Helene.”


End file.
